Academic Paper Download

Academic Paper Download

Produce a structurally verified, identity-bound PDF and adjacent provenance manifest. Require an explicit final output directory and keep automatic resolution in this order: Unpaywall, Semantic Scholar OA, arXiv, then browser handoff.

Workflow

1. For a DOI or exact title, select the caller's final output directory. Never

guess a research directory. Add author/year when they help disambiguate a title.

1. For a publisher URL, first resolve or confirm its DOI. Pass only that DOI to

fetch.py; the CLI does not accept publisher URLs as inputs.

1. Run the downloader and accept success only when the result contains a

verified file, SHA-256, size, identity_status: matched, and adjacent manifest.

1. If automatic OA sources are exhausted, or a publisher page requires login,

institution access, or interaction, explicitly choose a browser backend and read [references/browser-handoff.md](references/browser-handoff.md). Prefer the current Chrome session when it already has authorized institutional access. Never silently switch backends after login failure.

1. When the user explicitly selects CloakBrowser, also read

[references/cloakbrowser-handoff.md](references/cloakbrowser-handoff.md). Keep it outside PaperTransport; do not use its stealth or humanize features to solve CAPTCHA, Turnstile, paywalls, security warnings, or authentication.

1. Read [references/integration.md](references/integration.md) when embedding

the library or injecting a provenance-recording transport. Read [references/env.md](references/env.md) for runtime configuration.

CLI

Resolve the installed skill directory to an absolute path. Use the path exposed by the skill loader or npx skills list --json; do not assume the current working directory is the skill directory:

SKILL_DIR='/absolute/path/to/academic-paper-download'

After installation, explicitly create the hash-locked CLI runtime and prove it with the network-free smoke test. bootstrap is the only core command that installs packages; normal commands never install or update dependencies:

python3 "$SKILL_DIR/scripts/runtime.py" bootstrap --locked --json
python3 "$SKILL_DIR/scripts/runtime.py" smoke --offline --json

The runtime lives outside the installed skill directory and works for copy, symlink, and read-only installations. Install requirements-cloakbrowser.txt only in a separate isolated environment when that optional backend is explicitly selected. Its browser binary is a separate, preflight-verified installation; the handoff script never downloads it.

Fetch by DOI:

python3 "$SKILL_DIR/scripts/runtime.py" fetch \
  '10.48550/arXiv.1706.03762' \
  --out ./papers --format json --pretty

Fetch by exact title:

python3 "$SKILL_DIR/scripts/runtime.py" fetch \
  --title 'A precise paper title' \
  --author 'First Author' --year 2024 \
  --out ./papers --format json --pretty

Use fetch schema to inspect the machine contract version. Only an artifact whose current manifest records matched identity evidence may return skipped: true. Read [references/env.md](references/env.md) when embedding the library or diagnosing Python/runtime compatibility.

Result Rules

• Treat exit code 0 as complete, 1 as unresolved, 3 as invalid input,

and 4 as retryable transport failure.

• Require pypdf parsing, at least one page, a final %%EOF, matching size,

and SHA-256 before committing the PDF and manifest.

• Before commit, require the requested DOI in document identity metadata or a

primary first-page DOI position. If no primary DOI is available, require a strong title match and treat available author/year disagreement as a mismatch. A title found only in first-page text also needs matching author or year evidence.

• Do not treat arbitrary reference-list DOIs as the paper's primary DOI. A

scanned/no-text PDF without defensible embedded metadata is unresolved and requires manual verification; it is not a successful artifact.

• Never infer redistribution permission from successful access. Preserve

access_basis, license_status, and source-declared license fields.

• Never select the newest file in Downloads or accept HTML, truncated PDFs,

symbolic links, partial downloads, credentials, cookies, passwords, or session tokens.

Provenance

scripts/paper_fetch/ selectively adapts MIT-licensed ideas and code from Agents365-ai/paper-fetch at commit c3baaa3d5df9a7eecb16fc2b4c8d10416f59bcb7. See LICENSE.paper-fetch.txt for the retained license notice.

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: tiangong-ai
• Source: tiangong-ai/agent-skills
• License: MIT

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.